Whee! This is fun... I didn't think anyone would care. But considering I put it as a challenge, I should have known better with this bunch! I'll give you a clue...he was a painter who once said:There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

You made that too easy! The answer was on my short list of "guesses", and I now realise why the painting is familar (I had an art history major as a flat mate in university) but I'll leave it to someone else to expose the painter to extend the fun!

Darwin: You teach intro anthropology? That sounds really interesting (NOT being sarcastic!) Is "Ishi" or something like that required reading? I took a (very) basic course ages ago, and worked in a museum that contained artifacts soley found in the area (southern Manitoba). For such a small place it was neat to see all the history there. Granted, it was mostly Native arrowheads and such, but there were quite a few cultural pieces too and things like tent rings and such. I'm guessing your line of work doesn't touch on any of these areas (based only on the fact I would like them too!)....but I thought I'd check.

Hi! I guess you could call me a "newbie", but I hope you won't because I hate that word! lol Anyway...I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida and now live just outside there in Winter Park, Florida. I have a technical cerificate (whoopdee doo) in computer programming that I got on my way working towards an AS in same, but halfway there decided I prefer working with computers to working ON computers. (It was the networking class that did me in) Anyhoo, I am now a senior working on my BA in Environmental and Growth Management Studies (geez what a name) at Rollins College.

uhm, hi there.it's been quite a while since i signed up here (over a year already) and i've never found the time (*cough*) to write something here.most of you only know me for the crap i post in the living room or my sarcastic comments here and there (or my contributions to mircryption/xchat)there's some more info in my profile (yes, i'm lazy)

I'm relatively new to this board, but certainly not to computers and the web (ah, I remember the days of slip TCP connections and using NCSA Mosaic...). Anyways, my name is Jason, and I'm 29 years old. I've been using computers since my dad brought home an original IBM PC way back when.

My area of interest has always been user interfaces and how people interact with technology, which is why my educational background is in Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction. In my past jobs I've done a lot of mobile design and usability at Nokia and Qualcomm in San Diego. Flash forward to now: I'm a user experience researcher (also called usability engineer) at Microsoft in Seattle, WA. The program I work on is Windows Media Center. Day in and day out, I'm running studies or visiting users in their homes and getting to see how real users (not the software engineers) use our program. The difference can be quite striking at times!

So, since there was a invitation in the newsletter to post to this thread ......

I'm Gez, an opera singer. English by birth, Irish by blood. Based in England (Greater London now) but posting from Berlin, where I am staying for 14 weeks, singing two productions in a row. My singing career is going well but I've decided to move into directing operas during the next 10 years. I love singing but I have the most fun using my brain, and directors do that all day (or at least they can if they choose to).

I got into computers rather late, despite Sinclair Spectrum experiences as a child, but I'm known in my business as a bit of a geek. I made my own website and am capable of basic but useful troubleshooting when colleagues have computer woes. I write the odd little AHK or Notetab Pro script (slowly and painfully). I have AD(H)D, and since realising this (and starting medication) I've stopped obsessively surfing for tools to do my organising for me. Now, instead, I am trying to organise myself .... but I still enjoy searching for tools to help me.

Ah spit! emerald's avatar is a painting (or a portion of a painting?) by Salvador Dali.

Anyway, the courses I teach are first and second year and I have taught the Plains culture area in the past - fascinating stuff! But my area of specialisation is physical anthropology (as opposed to cultural anthropology and archaeology) the Neanderthals (so I'm on the wrong continent altogether!), who occupied Europe and the Middle East 130,000 to 28,000 years ago. I'm off to Belgium for five weeks in June and July to excavate a Neanderthal site so won't be around here much, if at all, during the summer. Getting pretty excited, too...

... Flash forward to now: I'm a user experience researcher (also called usability engineer) at Microsoft in Seattle, WA. The program I work on is Windows Media Center. Day in and day out, I'm running studies or visiting users in their homes and getting to see how real users (not the software engineers) use our program. The difference can be quite striking at times!

So, there you have it.

Now that takes guts. Knowing what most people's knee jerk reaction to the words "Microsoft" is, to baldy admit a connection takes some serious intestinal fortitude.

Seriously, I just bought a new Dell with Media Center on it and I am impressed. Not with the Dell particularly but a good deal made it hard to pass up.

Which brings me to my next question (for everyone this time), Any Dell support people out there? Who speak and understand English as a first language? And finally, who understand the Intel RAID system? Boy, am I shooting loaded dice! The last one is the most important, so an Intel guru will work also

What 60's revival? Are they dead? Why wasn't I told! Now I have to get rid of the tie-died stuff and the flower van.

RoadRunner, glad to hear you like Media Center. Was it the Vista version?

I started at MS in early September but ran a large study on Media Center covering success rates, time to complete tasks, and where errors are made in the latest version. I'm pushing some changes up to the managers and some UI changes will most likely be seen in the next release, though I'm not at liberty to say if that's in a service pack or Windows 7.

With all the criticism Microsoft gets (and believe me, I certainly give it too!), it's nice to know they value user experience. Involving users in design makes software that much better.

My name is Greg A. I live in Los Angeles,CA and am an Interior Designer. I have a web site that offers name-brand modern and contemporary furniture w/Free Shipping! http://www.sleekspace.comThis site is a cool web site!

Ok, well, my name is Adrien, i live in Paris, France. I'm 27 and i (try to) make illustrations and comics for a living. I always spend (too much) time looking for cool life-changing softwares, ran into donationcoder and loved it. So here i am !

By the way, i juste discovered AutoHotKey thanks to this forum and it seems extremely powerful and interesting. I'd love to use it so if anyone has tips or tutorials, any help would be really appreciated.

My name is Michel (Michael in English), frenchman living now in Tours, France. I've heard so many good things about ProcessTamer on Betanews.com that I decided to try it. Comments seem up to now to be true: ProcessTamer appears to work just fine on my old 1.6GHz system. I have a 6 month key, but looks like I'm heading for a donation. Need more time.